Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Tagged: Apologia, General Science, Lesson Plans, science

This topic has 12 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 2 months ago by Stacy Montgomery.

Viewing 13 posts - 1 through 13 (of 13 total)

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November 4, 2015 at 1:49 pm
4my4kids
Participant
I am trying to figure out which daily lesson plans for Apologia General Science to use. I’ve been searching for some and have seen them at these places: christianbook.com, rainbow resource center, my father’s world, and I know there are some from Donna Young’s.
For those of you who have used any of these daily lesson plans could you please help me by telling me what you liked about them? Why?
Thanks!
November 4, 2015 at 2:34 pm
art
Participant
I’ve never used any lesson plans because they stress me out. I just have our daughter read until she gets to the On Your Own questions and answer them. (And talk to me about what was interesting) Next time, do the same. Or til she gets to an experiment. I just have a loose expectation about how long it might take to do each module, but if she needs more time, ok. Less time, that’s great too. I’m not really sure that answers your question; but my adult son did 3 Apologia books that way, my junior is on her 4th one, and my 8th grader on her first. It has always worked for us.
November 4, 2015 at 2:45 pm
Melanie32
Participant
We use the same method as Art. It works very well at our house as also. 🙂
November 4, 2015 at 4:05 pm
4my4kids
Participant
Okay, thanks!
November 5, 2015 at 8:10 am
tkbbmom24
Participant
I purchased a lesson plan from SL when we were first starting Apologia – I think I opened it twice. One thing I do use w/ Apologia and my kids love the option – I get the notebook pages from Knowledgebox Central. I print them and place in a binder – I had one that liked to make them into lapbooks and another that just liked the questions on the notebook pages and to answer them.
November 5, 2015 at 8:39 am
Sue
Participant
We didn’t use lesson plans, either–just did a similar thing to what Art did. However, I did download the Donna Young plan just to be able to check off what we did (too lazy to make my own chart, I guess).
We didn’t really end up needing a lesson plan because we signed up for the at-your-own-pace class for Apologia General Science on the Virtual Homeschool Group website (it was free) so DD listened to their lectures after completing the reading. She also took the quiz and exam for each module as part of the course, and it tracked her grades for me as well. They would look over her lab sheets if she emailed them to the teacher and send it back to her with comments (and include those as extra credit), but we did not use that feature, just kept track of what labs she did on our own.
December 4, 2015 at 11:16 am
4my4kids
Participant
I have looked at doing the Virtual Homeschool Group. I might re-look at that as well.

Here is another question though about Apologia General Science. How would Charlotte Mason use Apologia? Would she make sure they knew the vocabulary like the course wants the child to know? Would or should we make them take the tests? I want my kid to be ready and capable of doing college science so do I start doing tests and vocabulary?
Any ideas?
December 4, 2015 at 1:42 pm
Tristan
Participant
Great question! I’ll share what we did, and what we’re doing with Biology this year (Makayla is in 9th). For General Science we DID do the tests, and we DID have her do the study guide, and we DID have her study the vocabulary. We chose to do it then because that was her first ‘step up in difficulty’ course we did in junior high.
This year she’s doing Apologia Biology and we’ve changed a little bit. She does learn the vocab and do the study guide. We do NOT do the tests. Why? Because the study guide is very similar and what she does is works through the study guide like a test (without the book) until she comes to something she doesn’t know, then she pulls out the book to study that item because she obviously didn’t ‘get it’ the first time through. However, she is used to taking tests, she takes them in math, and does yearly standardized testing, some oral exams, and some written exams. So we have a mix!
To each their own. We slowed General Science down in the early part of the course so she could get her feet under her on how to work through a textbook course, which was really helpful. She ended up taking about 11 months to do the course instead of 9. She was mostly independent of me, teaching herself, only bringing me into it when she struggled with a concept. Sometimes talking through things was helpful.
December 8, 2015 at 6:20 am
hsmom22
Participant
Tristan,
Are you using a schedule for Biology this year or are you doing something similar to Art, as in coming to a natural break in the text, doing the OYO questions, labs as they come, and then moving through the book that way?
December 8, 2015 at 6:39 am
Tristan
Participant
This year she’s using the Notebooking journal Apologia put out, it has a schedule in it. They break it into daily work sections and she does however many days in a week she’s up for (she usually does science twice a week, but she may tackle 1 section one day and 3 sections on another day, it is up to her).
December 8, 2015 at 2:24 pm
hsmom22
Participant
Thank you, Tristan. Very helpful! I will check out the journal.
December 9, 2015 at 1:22 am
Melanie32
Participant
I’m not convinced that Charlotte Mason would have used Apologia so I can’t say how she might have used them. I guess we could surmise that she would use reading and narration as usual.
I plan on having my daughter do a module from every now and then as instructed just so that she is familiar with textbook methods. I think 2 modules a year is plenty for this purpose. For the rest of the modules, we read through the module together, do the On Your Own exercises orally and my daughter completes the study guides independently. Then we move on to the next module.
February 20, 2016 at 8:36 pm
Stacy Montgomery
Moderator
Tristan,
Do you find that twice a week is plenty time to work through the Apologia science books in a school year of about 9 months, or does that take the 11 months? Also, how long is your child working in science per lesson?
We’re going into Year 7 with my oldest this coming fall and, I’m trying to wrap my head around how science will look for her.
Thanks
Stacy